Best books to read this May

The books you should be adding to your reading list this month? Viv Groskop knows

This is truly an extraordinary novel, already gaining comparisons to the work of Margaret Atwood and Jeanette Winterson. This has a delightful fantasy quality in the mould of The Snow Child or The Night Circus. The sea has flooded the earth and there is a battle for scant resources, especially fresh water. North lives on a circus boat, floating between the scattered islands that remain. Through a chance meeting, she befriends a lonely woman who has a house in the middle of the ocean. Their friendship will change everything. Memorable and captivating.
(Harvill Secker, £12.99; out May 7th)

Early Warning by Jane Smiley

If you missed the first volume of Smiley’s elegant new trilogy, Some Luck, it wouldn’t be a disaster to start here. (Although you should also read Some Luck.) Widowed Rosanna and her five children gather at the farm that she and husband Walter had run for three decades. Suddenly everyone realises how much their lives are about to change. From 1953 to 1986 this takes in the sweep of the American century - and the lives of two generations of a family.
(Mantle, £18.99; out May 7th)

The Day Before the Fire by Miranda France

Set behind the scenes at a stately home destroyed by fire, the immaculate Lady Alexandra Marchant demands that everything be restored exactly as it was “the day before the fire.” But is it possible -- or even a good idea -- to resurrect the past? The war between a faked-up reconstruction and the possibility of change begins.
(Chatto & Windus, £12.99; out May 21st)

One Small Act of Kindness by Lucy Dillon

Jenny Colgan and Sophie Kinsella are fans of this clever and sweet story. It’s about Libby, a woman who has just moved out of London with her husband. They return to his hometown to run a B&B.
One day Libby finds an injured woman lying in a country road. It’s a connection with a stranger she was not expecting.
(Hodder & Stoughton, £7.99)

The Savage Hour by Elaine Proctor

Set in rural post-apartheid South Africa, this is a novel from screenwriter Elaine Proctor about how a community handles bereavement and grief. On a fiercely hot day a doctor is found drowned in the river, an accident - she must have slipped. Everyone who knows her mourns the tragic death of an extraordinary woman. Only one friend - a detective - sees that it might not have been an accident. Gripping.
(Quercus, £8.99)

Shoes for Anthony by Emma Kennedy

From the best-selling author of The Tent, the Bucket and Me and I Left My Tent in San Francisco comes this funny and warm novel, drawn from Emma Kennedy’s father’s own WWII childhood. A small, impoverished Welsh mining village: it seems to remote to be touched by war, until a German aircraft is downed nearby and the place is suddenly flooded with Americans preparing for the French invasion. Dawn French and Jon Ronson are fans.
(Ebury, £12.99; out May 7th)

The Sudden Departure of the Frasers by Louise Candlish

Recommended by Rosamund Lupton as “a master of her craft”, Candlish writes stories about people facing dramatic dilemmas. When a couple buy their new “perfect home”, they overlook the fact that the previous owners seem to have fled overnight. Shunned by the neighbours who themselves are behaving strangely, the truth slowly comes to light. Brilliantly obsessive.
(Penguin, £7.99; May 21st)

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